Exhibitions & Public Events

Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput

Friday, Jan 26, 2018 - Tuesday, Feb 6, 2018

Swell Gallery

On May 4, 1699, Gulliver set sail from England to the South Sea. Driven by a violent storm, Gulliver made his first voyage to Lilliput, an island inhabited by tiny people. Lilliput is an intersection of fantasy and reality - although its residents are only one-twelfth the height of ordinary human beings, they are as small and petty as the normal man.

Curated by Yang Bao, this exhibition features four artists who create their Lilliput: Henry Chambers, Yan Huang, Joshua Zachary Mintz, and Tomy Yan. Humorous and irreverent, their playful art is a distorting mirror of the reality. The context of everyday life doesn’t stay, and the border between real and unreal is not fixed.

If reality is the state of things as they exist, and if it’s what you see, hear, and experience, when watching the absurdity happen every day in this “real” world, have you ever doubted if it is still the “real” world you believe? Are most people living in a fantasy world in any case? By folding fact into fiction, reality is mysterious and elusive. Indeed, in Lilliput, reality can be reached only through fabrication and imagination.

Image: Dollhouse, Tomy Yan

The Swell Gallery is located on the first floor of SFAI's Fort Mason Campus at Pier 2, 2 Marina Boulevard.